Debates about the philosophy and methodology of church ministry abound. In the middle of it all sometimes one fundamental reality gets forgotten: the church is the one institution in society positioned at the intersection of human need and divine resources. This is an enormous privilege and a sober responsibility of every church.
“Engagement” is bringing together God’s supply and human need. It means closing the God-gap. Engagement has to be the driving dynamic at every level of spiritual life in real churches. Years ago I started to talk to the church I pastored–just as one church, one group of people looking for next steps in the new millennium–about four kinds of engagement.
1. Engaging with God (the life of worship and personal devotion). That’s what people need. That’s what they want. That’s what God has called us to do. Nobody is going to care a hundred years from now who had the biggest church, or the most-quoted catch-phrase. What will matter is whether we engaged with God.
2. Engaging with God’s people (meaningful koinonia through small groups and other means). A church can be and must be a movement of people coming together, living the shared life, finding grace in the other.
3. Engaging with one’s community (imaginative ways to distribute Christian witness through involvement in social needs–decentralized; grass-roots, salt and light witness). We must release people into the great mission–in reality, not just in words. In the world, but not of the world. The community of Christ infiltrating the surrounding community.
4. Engaging with the world (developing an awareness of and involvement in global mission). An ordinary believer living an ordinary life in a small town in the middle of Nebraska can be a “world Christian.” Joining a two-week mission team to do construction work in Costa Rica can open a believer to the horizon of God’s great work in the world. But we don’t need plane tickets to be world Christians. Our vision of the great mission is only as limited as our spiritual imaginations. When we tell the stories (and tell them well) our people will thank us for transporting them to a higher place where nations are not distinguished by crayon colors as they are on a map.
I started to ask the members of our congregation at least once a year whether they can say with honesty: I am engaging with God; I am engaging with God’s people; I am engaging with my community; I am engaging with the world. Most people know where they are engaged, and where they are not.
Just look up the multiple definitions of “engagement” in the English dictionary, and the applications for church ministry are obvious:
Engage (en-gaj)…
“to become involved in or participate in”
“to pledge or to promise”
“to assume an obligation”
“to become meshed or interlocked”
“to be attracted to or engrossed with”
“to draw into”
“to reserve to use”
Engagement is bringing together God’s supply and human need. It is the “bringing together” that is the transformational process for individuals and for a local church because it is extraordinarily easy for us to say we believe in divine supply and human need, but in our ministry we don’t really bring together the supply and the need. Too often the church talks about God’s great provisions (grace, salvation, mercy), but it is not applied in real and practical ways in people’s lives. This has resulted in disengaged Christians and disengaged churches. A lot of talk, little action. Disengaged worship is when we are just going through the motions, when there is no God-encounter. Disengaged congregations have gatherings of people that could be engaged with each other in a revolutionary community, but somehow never get past cake and coffee in fellowship halls. Disengaged “missions” initiatives are merely writing checks and mailing them overseas. Disengaged evangelism keeps the gospel bound up in catch phrases that are increasingly meaningless to the non-believing world. Disengagement keeps us talking a good line as the church with little or no long-lasting effectiveness.
We preach to the choir. We feel self-satisfied. We affect no one.
Engagement is a call for the 21st century church. Not because its our newest invention in making today’s churches run well, but because it is the ancient way, so often forgotten, neglected, and layered-over with so many distracting ambitions. On the one hand we see a world more connected than ever before through technological communication advances, but what we learn in the end is how fractured and fragmented the world, our communities, our families, and we ourselves are.
One of the most important dynamics to understand (and the most exciting, I think) is the exponential effect different forms of engagement have on each other. Engagement is a movement. It is divine power reshaping human experience. God’s resources brought into contact with human need is a work of God’s Spirit that happens at all these different levels. And here is the best part: when we lead the ministry of a church as a whole, and when we bring these different kinds of engagement into contact with each other, they have an exponential effect. The energy of one kind of engagement is joined to the energy of other engagements and things really get out of control!
If a church tries to get a few hundred more people each year involved in small groups, that’s a good thing. But if the energy of small groups is brought into the worship of the church, and global engagement is featured by story-telling in the worship time, and personal devotional life (engagement with God) is directed to community engagement, then the energy of each of these dynamics builds on each other. In other words, the whole church that mixes and matches and blends engagement with God, with God’s people, with the community, and with the world, will discover a fire that feeds itself. A fire is never sustained when the logs fueling it are spread out and separated from each other. But that is our instinct in church leadership, to put spiritual life into categories and their own special rooms in the church.
Engagement is a way of life–for the believer, and for churches. It is more than a program or task or project. It is social action and global involvement, but not merely so. Effective engagement with the needs of the world only begins as people are engaged with God.
At the bottom line the question is this: if we believe that people live and suffer in profound spiritual poverty, and if we believe God has provided grace and power and truth, how can we not see our mission as bringing together the need and the supply? How can we not do everything we can to engage?
Well said. Engagement is intentional and clarifies!
I am a lay leader,but I think you’ve hit the nailing on the head. Thank you for the insight and clear presentation.. The Lord has been laying this on my heart, heavily! We get so very ingrown and I believe we are hurting our witness! I just wonder how pleased The Lord is with us. He would say “you can do so much better. get My vision on!!!
very much on time with what I have been NOT seeing in the local church. It is long past the time for preaching to each other while the world is still in darkness. Thank you and I will share this message immediately!
In terms of engaging with community, I’ve been thinking about how our resource-rich suburban churches could be so helpful and such encouragement to urban churches who struggle to have the people with leadership skills and other resources that would help them meet the needs of their community. How can we encourage churches to come alongside one another, not in a token appearance at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but in a regular commitment to one another? I have been guilty of the token serving and see now that it was not very helpful in any long-term, meaningful way. I’m thinking that church leadership needs to set the tone…Any suggestions?
Mel, thanks for the way you are using your gift of writing (the power of the pen) to engage His churches and leaders toward greater spiritual influence! Your example spurs all of us on to greater engagement and to using our spiritual influence to expand His kingdom! With 79% of Waukesha County and 81% from Milwaukee County missing from action weekly from His worship gatherings, we as the 21% (or 18% respectively) must find some out-of-the-box ways of engaging our congregations and those on the outside looking in! His ongoing engagements to and through you!
People are fed up with corruption and injustices here in Brazil where I live. In July 2013 this discontent spilled over into the streets in mostly pacific protests. There hasn´t been such public demonstrations since public demonstrations in 1984 brought an end to military rule and ushered in democratic elections. The people are regaining their voice and positioning themselves to declare that they want to see more results from their govenment. But where are the Evangelical leaders and their prophetic voices in all this? Christians in Brazil are asking if this is the time to engage in public protests. Part of their hesitancy is because common thugs and politically paid and masked “black block” radicals are mixing in the crowds and trashing public and private property in the demonstrations. Evangelicals need to do some seriously soul searching to discern how they can effectively engage with their changing society and their community. The biggest challenge that Christians here in Brazil might face as they consider “engaging their (politicized) world” is to re-allign and to re-engage themselves with God, and especially the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. Without a clear understanding of the model for engagement and change that Jesus proposed, it is possible the Church will miss out on an opportunity to genuinely engage and see transformation in their communities and their nation.
Dear Pastor Mel, the four point on Engaging, what a profound points to ponder over. If every Christian and Church can take this seriously our world will be different. I am challenged . . . I feel my mission field and the community gets transformed because we are engaged with the local community. I do believe strongly it is a manditory for every Christian ( believer ) to be Salt and Light.
What you have said here has touched me deeply. It seems to me that too many people, particularly in the Anglican/Episcopal Church to which I am an active member, seem to forget that ‘He that is within is more powerful than he that is in the world. We christians seem to be allowing the world to dictate to us. If at the individual level we are not engaging with God, how can we help others? I believe that our lives must show who we believe and what we believe to our family and to our community. Our brothers and sisters in Church must show the love of God to each other. We must as a Church engage with people – we cannot be aloof.
Thank you for this thought provoking piece. I will certainly share it with the members of my small group and in our Spiritual Encounter Meeting.
Thanks and God bless you.